Thursday, September 30, 2010

These little Frankenstein's were really easy to make and are so cute! I marred 2 of mine before my photo op, but these took less than 5 minutes to do! Except my pinky my nail length at the moment is nubbin's. I broke my 4 of my nails on a wicker basket filled with tea towels..... I could not friggen believe it as I have been doing some heavy duty crafty things and built some around the house stuff. = a friggen wicker basket = my goodness

I like nubbins and think that painted and taken care of they are just as lovely as long nails. I am aching to get some artificial nails on though, but am using the hot glue gun almost everyday, and painting Halloween crafts as well, so I am taking a few days off of wearing false nails. But I still paint my nails everyday! ( & take photos ). I saw this video yesterday on Killer Colours and had to copy immediately!

Below are my nails, my real nails. I attribute their length to applying Nailene Brush on glue beneath the tips of my nails and keeping them polished. Normally I never let my real, natural nails grow this long, but I wanted to do a bunch of 'experiments' with them..... oh well, I still have my pinky nail to work with.

Sally Hansen Mint Sprint - 2 bubbly coats with TC

These DO dry super-duper fast = but I always get bubbles... no matter what I do!

here are my nekkid nails at the moment.

This is the glue I am brushing on beneath the tips of my nails... it is ALOT LESS MESSY than glue in a regular bottle...... but as you ca see by the teeth marks on the cap..... it does have a few flaws..... mostly that it seals shut really, really well but that just means that it drys fast which is a good thing!

Monday, September 27, 2010

Icing Un-named red, 2 coats with Art Deco Striping polish in Black, and two coats of Icing un-named multi-colored glitter, and a coat of Nailene Top Coat. Surprisingly, this was not too tough to take off....... both Icing polish's are from the knock-off Alice in Wonderland LE set I picked up a few months ago.

Whew - I like new things and innovation... but when things change and I am not notified beforehand... whew! I am not happy! I parked my bunz in front of the computer yesterday for some marathon posting and I could not get Blogger to work for me..... but I'm back with less whining and ready to contribute to the world!

That LA COLORS Art Deco striping polish is pretty rad.... I wish I had the skillz to do some fabulous manis with it right now.... but here is my first try with it. Baby steps, right?

Here is a close-up of the multi-colored glitter, medium blue, silver, gold pink and red

Sun

Indoor Fluorescent

This Icing LE set came out quite a while ago, I may have seen someone model one of the glitters but so far I don't think I have seen much from this Icing LE Set. I bought this a few months ago ( on sale, or course ) and I guess this is supposed to be the Icing knock-off of the Alice In Wonderland Collection by OPI. The two reds a really pretty, and those glitters- Peeee-uuuuuuuu, I have never smelt an Icing glitter like that before. The glitters did dry fast, though.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Here I stretched my previous mani, Icing Bordeaux, using a dotting tool and Wet n' Wild Disturbia. Dots are super - duper easy to do. I first did a diagonal mani by applying Nailene French Tip Guides diagonally across my nails then added 2 coats of Wet n' Wild Disturbia to the tip portion of my nails.

When that was sorta dry I removed the French Tip Guides and started dotting. I found this dotting tool in the scrap-booking section at my favirote dollar store in my town. It is not sold as a dotting tool, it is a ' Embossing Stylus Tool, below is the package it came in and a (small) photo of the actual dotting tool.

I think that you could use anything with a small round end on it, this thing makes perfect little circles. When i was hunting around for actual dotting tools, none of the beauty supply places had any! I have read that the end of a bobby pin worked well for making dots, too.

Towards the end of this post is some quick skittlez I did using some sheer Sally Hansen polish's. I am mesmerized by some layering I do and have seen..... some of the combos of polish turn out so beautiful.

1 coat towards the left & 2 coats for the rest of my thumb nail..... this needs a little more clear. Layered over black.

I made this using SH Opal Truth, the same polish I made these 3 frankens with{ 1, 2, 3 }

I think this is a little too milky, but looks okay at 1 coat.... I will be adding alot more clear to this, I couldn't get a great photo of it, but there is alot of multi coloured micro shimmer in there.

Sally Hansen Xtreme wear Strawberry Icing. 1 coat Layered over black

I have tried layering this over girly colours but I think it looks best layered over blues, greens and black. I will have to look for this at the store as I am not sure if it is still available.

It does not have any opalescence, or flash. It is just straight up pinkish glass fleck.

I have worn Strawberry Icing before HERE, and here it is alone at 3 coats

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Lavender Envy is a gorgeous polish. It is not available in the core line of Xtreme Wear anymore... It should be though. I think when the Xtreme Wear line first came out there was alot of these sheer iridescent & opalescent colours.

This is 1 coat layered over black. This polish looks good layered over everything. HERE is a post layered over Sally Hansen Flirt on my TOES.

Sally Hansen Lime Lights. 1 coat layered over black

I layered this over a dark burgundy polish HERE and it is sooooo pretty. I think that this polish can go a long way in frankening.... So if I get an urge to do some frankening I will be picking up a few bottles of this. The green shimmer is STRONG, and the iridescent flash is super duper strong, too.

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Cotton Candy, 1 coat layered over Black

I think this is a little too 'milky' to be a layering polish, but it still looks neat over a darker shade. Kinda like the eyeballs of Zombies in Zombie movies.

... And thats that. Lavender Envy is in my top 10 favirote polish's... with Lime Lights closely following. I am planning on franken-ing with it to see what I can come up with. I missed out of Maybelline Vanishing Venus but think I got a pretty close dupe layering it over burgundy and deep purple shades. Are there any frankens out the with Lime Lights?

What are your favirote layering polish's? I love to learn about different layering combos........

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Although this is very sheer, I think it was worth the 4 coats. This is an extremely bright florescent purple, the outdoor sunshine photos are accurate, while all my indoor photos are not so great. After wearing Nuclear Energy for the afternoon, I wanted to do a diagonal mani with Love My Nails Chrome Envy.... but that did not work out...... I love the colour of Love My Nails Chrome Envy, but I cannot make it work ( ......yet - I'm gonna keep trying! )

So I covered that up with 3 thin coats of Love My Nails Diva - a fabulous magenta and blue mini bar glitter. Love my Nails has some very pretty shades and finishes, they are inexpensive, too. They are found at some Walmart stores in the USA.

Sun - This is a beautiful shade... $1.00 USD at the Dollar tree in the USA

Snipped off the excess and applied 1 coat of Love my Nails Chrome in Envy.... didn't look too good -

So I covered that up with 3 thin coats of Love My Nails Diva

Removed the french tip guides and applied 2 thick coats of Nailene TC

BUT _ I really didn't like how it looked and removed it very shortly after I took these photos. I fudged up my pinky nail, and just wasn't digging this look. I love this bar glitter though= it is bright magenta with sparse metallic blue bar glitter, and it is smaller than most regular bar glitter.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

This is a very pretty shade of one of the hot/in/now polish colours. I found this on the clearance rack at Icing but I barely paid attention to it when it was released earlier this year. I am surprised this hasn't shown up more on blogs & MUA becuase it took 1 1/2 coats to get to the bottle shade, this was surprisingly opaque. Most Icing polish's that ere straight cremes like this one are dependably opaque in 2 coats or less. The brush was nice and it dries fast, too.

Also isn't 'Bordeaux' like, a crimson-ish dark red shade, not a dark taupe?

These glitter packs are perfect for nail art. Each shade of glitter is 2 grams, and it goes along way.I love the large pruple and gold Hex Holo glitter.

I have been very successful with frankening loose glitter into polish's that have glitter in them already.

Wet n' Wild Kaleidoscope is a good one for this. The loose glitter did not bleed into the base of WnW Kaleidoscope. If you can find yourself a glitter base polish to work with, I would suggest trying that before adding loose glitter into clear polish.

I found this glitter at my local dollar store for $1.29 CAD, and If I exclusively use it for nail art it is going to last 4-ever!!!!! Doing a glitter sprinkle mani takes like 1/2 of a teaspoon to cover all 10 nails.

I know Micheal's crafts stores puts out mini glitter packs with the seasons, in this package there is 2 shades of holo hex glitter, 3 shades of opalescent glitter and 7 shades of metallic glitter.

I do wish that they came in zip-lock style baggies, though.

Below on the right is a front view of my Index nail, my real nail. I took this for perspective on how thin my nails always are, and to show the thickness of the artificial nails I wear ( left). You can see my real nails peeking out on the left, and how as they grow out they curve, making my nail beds taper at the tips of my nails.

It is a friggen miracle that my nail has not broke yet. Normally I chop them all down before I apply my artificial Nailene nails, but I want to see how long they can get...........